Gorbachev Urges New Union for Old Soviets : Republics: He backs Kazakhstan plan for closer ties among Commonwealth countries.

MOSCOW —  Just a year after the coup attempt that led to his empire’s demise, former Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev proposed Monday that the old Soviet republics come together again to re-create at least part of their old union.

“It has become obvious now that the disintegration of the union was the main reason for the dire situation in which all the former Soviet republics have found themselves, including Russia,” Gorbachev told reporters.

He said he supports Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s idea for a tighter, more disciplined union than the current loose Commonwealth of Independent States.

The former Soviet president, appearing at a coup anniversary news conference at the luxurious quarters of the think tank he now heads, announced that he plans to appeal to leaders of the Commonwealth countries to consider the Nazarbayev plan at their next meeting, set for Sept. 25.

Gorbachev’s proposal is likely to meet with categorical rejections from many of the nationalist leaders of the former republics, but he appeared to be counting on support stemming from the growing realization that the economic ties broken by the Soviet Union’s collapse have left all the republics poorer.

Before his resignation in December, Gorbachev had waged an untiring battle to keep the old Soviet Union together. The culmination of the struggle, the signing of a treaty among most of the Soviet republics reaffirming their membership in the union under new terms, had been scheduled for the day after hard-liners launched their putsch last August.

The coup stopped the signing of a union treaty for good and sent the Soviet republics scattering as far from Moscow’s unpredictable rule as they could. One by one, with gathering momentum, they declared their independence, and the agreement in early December among Russia, Ukraine and Belarus to form the Commonwealth finished off the Soviet Union.

Now, however, Gorbachev said, “I would consider it possible and necessary--and there are the real prerequisites for it--to propose to Commonwealth countries . . . to create a union of states.”

Nazarbayev’s proposal remains vague, but the Russian daily newspaper Rabochaya Tribuna reported recently that he believes that seven of the 15 former Soviet republics have “ripened” to the point of reuniting.

The Nazarbayev project proposes “a union of states characterized by tighter ties and mutual obligations in all spheres, instead of the current, amorphous CIS,” Rabochaya Tribuna said.

Along with proposing a new union, Gorbachev took the opportunity Monday to launch yet another attack on Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin’s handling of Russia’s economic policy and the government’s political strategy.

He condemned attempts at forcing the transition from communism to a market-driven system too quickly, calling such radical reform “a manifestation of neo-Bolshevism, an attempt to resolve problems overnight, in one fell swoop.”

“Once again, the individual is regarded as a cog, if not a sheep,” he said. “And what about free choice, based on democracy?”

In spite of all the country’s problems, however, he discounted the possibility of another coup.

“I think the putsch will not be repeated,” he said. “You would have to be an idiot and a half-wit to try it.”

Gorbachev also denied outright recent allegations by Anatoly I. Lukyanov, the former chairman of the legislature who now faces charges of abetting the coup attempt, that the president had been privy to plans for the coup and was somehow involved in it.

“That is a complete lie,” Gorbachev said hotly, and he proceeded to upbraid the media for even giving air time and newsprint to the perpetrators of the coup.

“You are doing everything possible to get through to the imprisoned protagonists in the coup,” he said, “but you did not raise your finger to get through to the Soviet president when he was in Phoros,” the Black Sea retreat where Gorbachev was held prisoner during the coup.

“None of you,” he said to the packed room of reporters. “It’s amazing.”